7/7/7 : Live Earth Day Picnic at Chateau Lalinde

 

Many came throughout the day -- some walking and others coming a long way on their bicycles - each bringing with them a picnic of locally grown and produced food -- and lots of ideas how we can, in our own and individual ways, make this planet a better place for the next generation.

The laptop was on standby, available to all, with Al Gore's message for the day, conservation and global warming info films and documentaries, and links to all the Live Earth events around the world. The children swam and enjoyed watching the ducks and the swans on the river. The forests across the Dordogne formed a beautiful backdrop to a beautiful day - and served as the perfect reminder of why it is important that we do care, that we do make an effort, that we do fight for the continuing existence of our planet.

The main thing that came out of all the discussions and brainstorming, was that on our own there are many little things that we can do to stem the destruction of our planet, and yes, it is important that we each do what we can, but it is TOGETHER that we can achieve so much more. For example, the SNPE, in Bergerac, "the world’s leading producer of industrial nitrocellulose, which generates over 80% of sales in export markets, through a distribution network with operations in some 50 countries worldwide...." is also responsible for massive pollution in the Bergerac area - both in the air and in the river. "What can one do?" was the question. The unspoken fear of the individual trying to take on the industry giants. "Ah! But if we all stood together and armed ourselves with knowledge of the industry, with information about their method of functioning, about their ways and means, and if we knew what the alternatives are -- what these giants could do if they set their minds to it, if they knew that the people who are their employees and their customers and their shareholders were not satisfied with them polluting our world, then we CAN confront them with conviction and courage and perseverance - and make them change their ways!

And, as a start Albert will talk to the employees who come to his language school for language lessons and get them talking and thinking.......... a very good start that will be! And then, when the municipal elections take place next year, we will all attend meetings and raise these issues with the politicians running for office. --- If Nicolas Hulot could make the presidential candidates commit to making the effort, so can we at municipal level!
And as for all the paper mills and factories along our stretch of the river, we will do the same.
An excellent start --- and all that just from a leisurely picnic alongside the river!

The SNPE is a French chemicals group, founded in 1971. It generates annual sales of 850 million euros, including more than half for exports, and has 5,000 employees in Europe, Asia and North America.

Originally a defense company, SNPE has diversified over the years and expanded its international business. It now operates worldwide, with a network of representatives and commercial subsidiaries in more than 70 countries.

SNPE was reorganized into four subsidiaries respectively dedicated to energetic materials, explosives for construction, civil engineering and mining, fine chemicals and speciality chemicals. --- It is the speciality chemicals which are now produced here in Bergerac.


Some of this nitrocellulose is used to make propellants but the majority goes to everyday products such as paint, varnish, ink and nail polish.
BERGERAC NC is the only manufacturer in the world to produce nitrocellulose for exclusively cosmetics applications. It has built up broad-based expertise in nail polish, keeping pace with international fashion trends and incorporating the latest technologies. Durlin, the brand name for its products, calls on leading-edge research to stay ahead of the curve. It offers a wide variety of products, including colored varnishes, nail and cuticle treatments, and pearled and coloring dispersions.

"You can always count on us." is their slogan. My question is "Can we? Can we always count on you? Even when it comes to cleaning up your act. Stopping the pollution in Bergerac by spending some of those €850million that your sales generate annually on building mechanisms into your operations? Can we count on you to consider your employees and your community?"

They do seem to have great concern for the safety of their employees, but what about their environment? Has anyone raised this issue with them?

Each guest left with a pledge to change their own corner of the world, tucked in with a beautiful water colour of the Chateau Lalinde - as a small gift to remind them of a very worthwhile - and pleasurable - day, and of why it is important that we do care and do make an effort.

The history of the Dordogne has one of the best and simplest examples of reclycing and conservation, dating back undreds of years. Read my article on the Exapatica.com site about the gabares throw-away boats and be inspired! And join us in standing together to make a difference. Together we CAN do it!

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Aquitaine Langues Language School, Bergerac

The power of blogging and the pleasures of googling

One of my favourite pastimes is googling. I love it! I love typing in a keyword and getting 7,943 of a possible 29,467 entries on the internet that will give me information about that subject!

There are other search engines, but googling remains my favourite -- perhaps because I have just about mastered the art of, more often than not finding the right keywords for the specific subject I am looking for. Perhaps because I can "google" -- legitimately 'google' (a word now in the Oxford dictionary as a noun) -- and until such time as I can 'orange' or 'jeeves' or 'blackdog', 'hotbot', lycos', 'webwombat', 'qango'............. no! none of them slip off the tongue and flow 'from the finger tips quite as smoothly as 'googling' does......

On the Spectator's blog, Coffeehouse Matthew d'Ancona writes about his "audience with the King of Google", Eric Schmidt.
"Just back from Google Zeitgeist Europe 2007 in Hertfordshire, as dazzling an assembly of those shaping the destiny of the web as you could hope to behold. The cast list reads like a who’s who of the media-political class: Sir Martin Sorrell, James Murdoch, David Miliband, Mark Thompson, Peter Bazalgette, Chad Hurley, Sanjiv Ahuja, Matthias Döpfner and many others. The ripple of power and cerebration outclassed any party political conference I have attended.

At the centre of it all, the quiet presence of Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google’s executive committee and CEO: some people don’t need to show off, and Schmidt is one of them. Why bother when you’re at the helm of a search engine company, capitalized at $149billion, and so culturally powerful that its brand-name has already entered the Oxford English Dictionary as a verb?

Schmidt says that the next question Google users will be asking is: “What should I do tomorrow?” And to that future question some of the answers could already be generated: “What should you read? We are going to do a pretty good job on that…We could give you a reading list on the hour.”

Politely, he prefers to refer to newspapers and magazines as “traditional media” than as “old media”. He resists the hyperbole of less Olympian webheads. That said, the world he describes is inescapably one of fundamental change: a world of social networking and zero deference, in which the authority of a relatively small number of information providers has been replaced by a much noisier marketplace and the permanent testing of reliability: “Everyone has a camera-phone, everyone is a blogger, everyone is a reporter.” The challenge for established media organisations, he says, will be to identify the stars: “One hundred million bloggers, and there are a couple of people you should have hired. And you screwed up when you didn’t!”

There is, Schmidt concedes, a risk of cultural balkanisation, in which online tribes communicate only with their fellows. But the likelier outcome is a blossoming of “self-mobilising” initiatives in which online communities form, seize the initiative and act together. Born in 1955, he watches with amazement as the young colonise the web and turn it to their own creative and entrepreneurial ends.

Schmidt carefully insists that the established structures of political life will not be overturned by the onslaught of Web 2.0: one senses that he does not want his awesomely powerful company to seem too powerful. Yet – by his own admission - the unprecedented level of e-scrutiny and the permanence of all digital records is “going to drive politicians crazy.” One only has to imagine what life will be like for the David Camerons of the future, their every youthful indiscretion caught on mobile phones and posted on Facebook: how will they mark out a boundary between their early private lives and their subsequent political careers when all the facts of their past are a click of the mouse away?

Schmidt’s suggestion is that – to take the US context – every single person running for the presidency should, two years before entering the race, interview every single person from their past and disclose every conceivable embarrassment, past and present, in one spectacular clearing of the closet. This, he says, will make news and buy time: “The cleverer politicians will understand they should ‘self-out’ or ‘self-describe’.” But woe betide those who miss anything out. What Schmidt calls “the standard for self-disclosure” will be unprecedentedly high.

Anyone who has followed Barack Obama’s campaign cannot fail to be impressed by the role the web has played in creating and sustaining its momentum (www.BarackObama.com, and many other unofficial sites). What Howard Dean began online in 2004, Obama has continued with much more sophistication – more, for instance, than Hillary Clinton. Schmidt will not be drawn on personalities, but speaks of a “new generation” of politicians who understand what is at stake – including, one assumes, Mr Miliband, who gave the keynote address at this year’s event, Mr Cameron, who has put the web at the very heart of his campaign strategy, and Nicolas Sarkozy, who held a weekly conference with 200 key bloggers."

Heady stuff! Interesting ideas.......... Google could be spearheading something that could change the political world? mmmmm Worth some thinking about.....

So what will we all be doing tomorrow? One leaves Eric Schmidt’s presence with a hunch that he has a clearer idea than most of us, says d'Ancona. I can believe that!


Previous Related Articles on Blogging

Power of Blogging
Blogs: The unedited voice of the people
Blooker Prize: Literary prizes for blogs
Chateau Lalinde Blog
Blogs for Expats in France
Tourism in France
All-time favourite: The Ten Coolest Blogs 2007
Blogging - still, again and toujours!
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Expat from Wales French Prime Minister's wife

Pénélope Kathryn Fillon,(née Clarke) wife of the newly appointed Prime Minister of France, François Fillon, is only the second ever foreign-born to move into the Palais Matignon, the French equivalent of 10 Downing Street. The first was Eva Barre, the wife of Raymond Barre, who was Prime Minister from 1976 to 1981. She was Hungarian born.

Penelope, or Penny, as she is known, was born 51 years ago in Llanover, close to Abergavenny in Wales. --- One has to wonder what it sounds like when the French try to pronounce these Welsh names!

She married François Fillon in 1980, and together they have had five children, Marie, Charles, Antoine, Edouard et Arnaud - the latter having been born in 2001. Obviously a good match, as one of François Fillon's brothers, Pierre, later married Penny's sister, Jane!

The French are quick to point out what an excellent French student Penelope was at school -- and "out of the ordinary student" they say, and whose French is excellent -- "although with a Welsh accent". That must sound quite lovely -- a gentle musical tilt to her perfect French from the green valleys of Wales.......

The couple live in the Château de Beaucé, a sprawling 12th century manor house at Sablé sur Sarthe, near Le Mans, in western France.

A local journalist, Florence Loyez, said: "Mme Fillon is a very natural and unpretentious woman. She's also very clever. I think she definitely has the intelligence and discretion to be a good 'second lady' of France. She'll advise her husband well."

M. Fillon, 53, is a close associate of M. Sarkozy. He is a handsome, eloquent man, regarded as more consensual and somewhat less abrasive than Sarkozy. As minister for social affairs in the government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin from 2002-05, M. Fillon is credited with steering a significant and overdue reform of the French pensions system through parliament. After he was fired from the government (following the rejection of the EU constitution by the French people), M. Fillon said that his reform was the "only memorable achievement" of M. Raffarin's term of office. As M. Sarkozy's prime minister, he will run the day to day government of France and will be expected to guide a large package of economic and social reforms through parliament within 100 days.

French prime ministers live and work at the Palais Matignon in Paris's seventh arrondissement, a once-aristocratic dwelling, larger than No 10 but much smaller than the President's Elysée Palace. The prime minister's wife and family do not always move into the Matignon but she is expected to be present for formal receptions.



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The aftermath of the French Presidential Elections : Chewing the Cud is a national pastime in France!

Sarko fever? Not in St. Pompon, says Martin Vander Weyer in yesterday's Spectator.

You can’t go much deeper into la France profonde than St Pompon, the village in a cleft of the hills between the Dordogne and the Lot to which I escape as often as I can. It’s a placid, unchanging, self-contained sort of place, a world of its own. I’d like to report that it was gripped by election fever this weekend – but if I did I’d be making it up.

Interesting that Mr Vander Weyer should make this comment. Here I am in La France Profonde -- admittedly not quite as profonde as St Pompon -- but within a hand's reach of it, and I found just the opposite.

No -- people were not out in the streets in their hordes with red roses or blue balloons, but they were all glued to their television sets at home in groups of family and friends and fellow supporters of either one or the other candidate.

-- And the debating -- the endless, ceaseless, continuous (consult Thesaurus for any more adjectives in the same vein and insert) debating that preceded the election by months, continued, and no doubt will continue for another few months and on the night was creating a distinct hummmmmmmmmm throughout the Dordogne valley. I always wondered about the French' love for the debate. Someone mentioned recently that the reason there is so much debate on French television -- for the bulk of the French television programmes is made up of debates -- or at least -- people sitting around and talking -- was that it is such a cheap way to make television programmes. It is a bit of a chicken and egg situation -- did their love for debating come first and then the realisation that it was cheap television production, or did the television production budget result in them finding out how much they loved sitting around and debating?............

But back to the elections.........I had commented before on attending political rallies in the area in the run-up to the elections. I was fascinated - and thrilled to be living in an area where the choice of the country's new president was weighing so heavily on everyone's mind. I am impressed that people take their leadership so seriously. In a world where elections and choice of government is more important than it has probably ever been in the history of mankind, this is sadly very seldom the case. We live in a world of apathy about our leadership. Oh yes! We like to complain -- and often vociferously -- after the horse has bolted, so to speak. But more often than not the biggest and loudest complainants are those who just could not be bothered to go cast their vote, because "What is my vote going to change? The stupid fool will get in anyway!"

Coming from a country where the majority never had the vote until recently, and a continent where western democracy is not the norm, the ability to participate in the political process and have my voice heard when it comes to choosing our leaders, is no doubt something I appreciate far more than most of my fellow Westeners. I do not take the privilege to elect my government for granted -- ever! And yes -- it is a privilege, not a right, and if everyone remembered that, they would not take it for granted either.

So -- when I found the interest everyone showed here in La France Profonde before and during and now, after the elections, I was, as I said, thrilled.

I despair when I talk to people who do not take an active interest in their government -- local or national. Even when people take to the streets and riot and show that they care that way -- even that is better than apathy! However, here I am surrounded by people who take an active interest. So much so that now that the elections are over, the debate is starting all over again. On television, on radio and in every home and little coffee bar and bistro, people are talking about the results of the elections, who voted for whom, what Sarkozy had promised and what he is likely to do and not do, what he will do first and what he will leave till later, where he will go, who he will choose as his prime minister and in his government, what the background and the talents and the faults are of each of the possible members of his government, whether his wife, Cecilia Sarkozy will support him, what her dress sense is, what she should do with her hair, how Sarkozy will stand up to Bush and will he keep his promise to urge the USA to adhere to strict measurements to combat global warming, ---- the list goes on. A post-mortem like I have never seen before! A veritable fest of chewing the cud! And the relish and pleasure they are getting out of this, is as a direct result of the fact that they had actually cast their vote and participated in the political machine that is grinding away and know that their voice and their vote had made a difference. What a wonderful knowledge that is!

Vander Weyer continues in his article : "Fortunately, however, the local Sud Ouest newspaper prints the results not just district by district, but commune by commune, so I now have a better idea which way the political breeze was really blowing down this narrow wooded valley 350 miles south of Paris. St Pompon mustered a turnout of almost 90 per cent, and voted 148 for Sarko against 141 for Ségo. That was against the run of play in our district, Domme, whose 5,000-odd voters inclined 52 to 48 for the socialist candidate – having given 8 per cent to Le Pen in the first round. To the extent that these detailed results offer any pattern, it is that the communes in which agriculture predominates were generally the strongest for Ségo, while those more dependent on commerce and tourism (led by the lovely hilltop bastide of Domme itself) tended towards Sarko. St Pompon, whose micro-economy is a mixture of the two, was bang in the middle."

As another very astute article by Simon Heffer points out: "...the majority of French are bought off with a lavish welfare state and jobs on the public payroll, financed by a minority who pay high taxes for the privilege of living in France. Business has had enough of bankrolling bureaucracy and funding feather-bedding." Choosing Sarkozy meant that France has chosen to finally move out of the 1940s, rather than to stay there to the point of utter economic destruction. The three great economic difficulties facing France are chomage, or unemployment, the absence of croissance, or growth and the weakness of pouvoir d'achat, or purchasing power.
Wages for most workers, especially in France's vast rural communities are low. "The bargain prices British tourists feel they have spotted when they buy food and wine, or pay for a meal in a restaurant, are quite often out of the reach of the average French family. The income tax threshold is high, and therefore only 48 per cent of those in work pay any.
By contrast, there are huge imposts on employing someone - and, once employed, staff are almost impossible to sack - which is part of the reason it is so hard for young people to get work, and why there is such high unemployment. It is also why so many dynamic young French people now choose to come to live and work in London, now the seventh biggest French city in the world."

" In some parts of France the signs of decay are becoming ever more obvious: shops boarded up in villages in the Dordogne, property not selling except perhaps to foreigners, and resentment about freeloaders, especially if they are perceived to be immigrants. France has numerous successful multinationals, and every French town has scores of one-man bands (notably retailers), but there is less and less in between.

The other factor that makes it so hard for energetic and enterprising French people to prosper is that they are usually prevented by law from working more than 35 hours a week. This law, brought in under the socialist government of Lionel Jospin, is now widely condemned, even by some supporters of Miss Royal, for the effect it has had on suppressing growth, living standards, wealth creation and productivity.

That Mr Sarkozy has said that he will not only scrap it, but will make the earnings for work done in excess of the 35 hours free of taxes both for the employee and the employer, is indicative of the hand grenade he intends to throw into the dormant French economy.

Vander Weyer concludes with this remark, which I have observed as well: "If there is any conclusion to be reached at all from this exercise it is, I suspect, that what rural France really wants is a mixture of socialist subsidy and welfare with rightist social and immigration policies; but most of all what it wants is to be left in peace and privacy, not to be told what to do, and not to be asked too many questions."
........ not to be told what to do and not to be asked too many questions, no, but do give your opinion and start a discussion going, though --- they do love that with a passion -- and no time like elections time for those kind of passionate discussing and debating!






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France chooses their new President: Nicolas Sarkozy

Nicolas Sarkozy in quotes

Guardian Unlimited

The 35-hour week

"It will never be possible to stress enough the evil that the 35-hour week has done to our country. How can we retain this mad idea that by working less, we will produce more wealth and create jobs?"

Taxation

"We've got the highest taxes in Europe. France's problem is we're paying too much tax."

The English

"Do we ask ourselves why the English buy our houses in the Dordogne and the Périgord, in the Lubéron, in Savoie and in many other regions? ... I have nothing against the English, who are our friends, but it is not my ambition that the most beautiful villages of France become holiday resorts reserved for the British."


"Certain people in France call me Sarkozy the American. I'm proud of it. I'm a man of action. I do what I say and I try to be pragmatic."

Immigration

"Who can't see that there's a clear link between the uncontrolled immigration of 30 or 40 years and the social explosion on our housing estates?"

"If people don't like being in France they only have to leave. We've had more than enough of always having the feeling that we must apologise for being French."

His reputation

"Why so much hatred [directed at me]? Perhaps it's because I say out loud what everyone quietly thinks."

On his suggestions that delinquent youths on poor estates were scum and should be cleaned out with a power hose

"I regret nothing."

EU expansion

"'I want an integrated Europe, in other words, a Europe that has borders ... Turkey is in Asia Minor."


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Election news: 16h00. Update at 17h30

Update: At 17h30: 75.11% of the electorate have voted!

So far only 14% have abstained.

In a hotly contested poll, over 75% of voters had cast their ballots by 17:30 this afteroon - the highest turnout at that point in more than 30 years.

The voting stays open until 20h00 tonight.

Wonderful! Allez la France, Allez!

***************************

From the BBC News site:

Radical change?

One of the reasons for the high turnout is the sharp contrast in the basic values embodied by the two candidates - continuity v change.

But there is an interesting twist in this poll. Traditionally left-wingers in France have tended to demand radical reform, while most right-wing voters have favoured the status quo.

Now these positions are largely reversed. Many voters are choosing Segolene because she has pledged not to force root-and-branch reforms.

"I want things to change, but not too fast," says Kathy Sylla, 20. "And that is why I am voting for Segolene. Sarkozy is too radical."

Conversely, this willingness to shake things up is precisely what attracts many to Sarkozy.

"He stands for reform against conservatism," says James Lellouche, 37, a manager.

"He will take on public sector workers whose jobs are secure whether or not they work, and who paralyse the country when their privileges are questioned."

Centre ground

Some voters - especially among those attracted to centrist ideas - find it difficult to choose between the two frontrunners.

Felicien Boncenne, 27, who works for a sports website, was turned off by the campaigns they both ran.

"The way they used advertising techniques and drafted in entertainment stars bothered me," he says.

In the end, however, Mr Boncenne cast his vote for Ms Royal - reflecting the choice of a plurality of voters in Montmartre.

"Sarkozy is too close to big money," he explains. "And it's about time we had a woman president."

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Sarkozy or Royal - Who will be the next French President?

The Lalinde village Square on the eve of the First Round of the elections
and on the eve of the Second Round...........

waiting for the voters......
and the result
Tonight we will know the answer. Here is an excellent site to follow the results as they come in tonight after 8pm.

There has been so much written about and debated on who will be the next French President. The French who are so ensconced in their Left or their Right corners, that they ventured, very hesitantly and very carefully, for the first time, into the centrist waters with a surprisingly 18% vote for Bayrou in the first round But although the 18% was an unprecedented daring event, it was definitely not going to be more --contrary to what I had forecast and expected -- rather voting for candiates whom they do not like or respect, but who are LEFT or RIIGHT, showing their difficulty with acceptance of change -- no matter how much they realize that change is of the utmost importance to keep their country from grinding to a painful halt.

Agence France Presse reports: "Both the right-wing front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Segolene Royal have spelled out their priorities for their early days in office if elected on Sunday at the helm of the euro-zone's second largest economy after Germany.

"For Sarkozy who has presented himself as the candidate of the clean break, this means that a clean break can't happen little by little, over five years," said Bacot, adding that Royal has also pledged to swiftly bring change. Sarkozy and Royal are confident they can secure a majority for their party in the National Assembly and win a free hand to push through reforms following a campaign that has been dominated by calls for change."

The first order of business for the president-elect who takes office around May 17 will be
**the appointment of a caretaker government ahead of legislative elections in June.
**making a foray into the international stage at the Group of Eight summit in Heiligendamm, Germany from June 6 to 8 and at an EU summit in Brussels on June 21 and 22.
**to bring unemployment, currently one of the highest in Europe at 8.3 percent, down to below five percent,
**to stimulate growth through a series of tax cuts that he argues will fuel consumer spending.
**Royale wil want to zero in on youth unemployment as a key battleground, creating some 500,000 jobs for the young French whose jobless rate is more than twice the national average
** Her first piece of legislation submitted to parliament will be a bill on violence against women that will improve assistance for victims and raise public awareness.
** Sarkozy plans to call an extraordinary session of parliament in July to adopt a raft of measures to "restore the value of hard work" -- a central theme of his presidential campaign. He has promised to exempt overtime worked above 35 hours from tax and social charges and bring down taxes by four percentage points -- although economists are skeptical that this can be done without putting the state in dire financial straits.

The first test of a Sarkozy presidency could well come with a bill to be submitted this summer to force public-sector monopolies, notably in transport, to ensure minimum services during strikes. The proposal has angered unions who see it as a unilateral move and sparked warnings of mass protests. The secretary general of the CFDT union, Francois Chereque, had predicted that there are bound to be protest movements, and Roayl has also used this not-so-veiled threat during the last few tense days. "His candidacy is dangerous. That is why I am asking voters to think twice," she told RTL radio in one of her final declarations of one of the most hotly contested elections in decades.' In the suburbs where the former interior minister is considered persona non grata, Sarkozy has promised to launch this summer a "Marshall Plan" to provide training for unskilled youth and prevent them from turning to crime. Although this is not anticipated to happen without severe opposition in the banlieu, the vote, if it goes his way, will be a reflection of the general feeling in France of people who have had enough of too-lenient policies towards minorities and immigrants.
**Royal will want to pay immediate attention to her most vociforous promise, namely to help the some two million women in France who are victims of spousal abuse and preventing the 400 who death of about 400 women who die every year att the hands of their husbands or partners.
** Royal furthermore promised to convene an employer-union conference in June that will tackle a broad gamut of economic issues, from wages to pension reform and also, the 35-hour workweek.
** and lastly she has pledged to reform the institutions of government to bring them closer to the people, reducing the powers of the presidency and giving parliament greater oversight. A referendum on the institutions of a new Sixth Republic would take place in September under President Royal.

Who will it be? UMP Nicolas Sarkozy, 52 years old, or the socialist Ségolène Royal, 53 years old?


These are their promised policies on: (R*=Royal, S*=Sarkozy)

SALARIES, BENEFITS AND PENSIONS

R* Minimum wage to rise by about 250 euros ($325) to 1,500 euros per month
R* Raise basic state pension by 5%
R* Jobless to receive 90% of salary for first year of unemployment
S* Exempt overtime (above 35 hours) from taxes and social security charges
S* Allow workers to retire at the age they want
S* Potentially remove benefits from those who turn down work

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

R* Renegotiated EU treaty put to referendum
R* Create a Eurozone government, which would promote economic growth and agreement on common tax levels
R* New EU-led Mideast peace initiative
S* "Mini" EU treaty put to French parliament
S* Create a new "Mediterranean Union" comprising France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Cyprus
S* Oppose Turkey's membership of the EU

HOUSING

R* Build 120,000 new council homes per year and allow councils to claim properties empty for two years
R* Cap some private rents and grant lifelong guarantee of housing
S* Provide assistance to those in council housing who want to buy their property
S* No person forced to sleep rough within two years of his election

ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT AND AGRICULTURE

R* Reduce dependence on nuclear power
R* 20% of energy from renewables by 2020
R* Reform EU farming subsidies to favour environment and smaller farmers
S* Promote nuclear power as a clean source of energy
S* Increase amount of tax on pollution
S* Simplify EU farming subsidies and link payments to actual market prices for products

ECONOMY AND TAXES

R* No increase in general taxation
R* Lower tax burden on companies that create jobs
R* "Consolidate" 35-hour week
S* 4 percentage point drop in taxes
S* Exempt up to 95% of population from inheritance tax
S* Allow people to work more than 35 hours if they wish

IMMIGRATION, LAW AND ORDER

R* Residency papers for those who meet certain criteria such as job contract, time in France
R* Military-style training camps for young offenders
S* Reduce illegal immigration, pursue selective immigration that favours arrival of qualified workers
S* Minimum sentences for repeat offenders, tougher sentences for juveniles

HOW TO PAY FOR IT

R* Financed by economic growth of 2.5% every year over next five years
S* Cut civil service, costs of which account for 45% of government budget


The French presidency: a user's guide

-- AFP copyright

Under the terms of the country's Fifth Republic constitution, the president of France is one of the most powerful elected leaders in the world.

Devised by Charles de Gaulle in 1958 in order to boost the authority of the head of state, the constitution declares the president to be the "guarantor of national independence" who "assures ... the proper functioning of public powers and the continuity of the State".

The president is head of the armed forces -- with control over France's sea- and air-based nuclear arsenal -- and every July 14 officiates at the military parade down the Champs Elysees in Paris.

He or she names the prime minister, chairs cabinet meetings and can dissolve the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament. Under Article 16, the president can declare a state of emergency and rule by decree in the event of a national crisis.

Under Article 64 of the text, the president is guarantor of the independence of the judiciary, and presides over its governing body, the Higher Council of the Magistrature (CSM). Under Article 17, he or she has power to issue pardons.

In theory France's Fifth Republic is a mixed presidential-parliamentary system, with a government -- led by a prime minister and answerable to the National Assembly -- which "determines and conducts the policy of the nation". In practice, powers have been increasingly consolidated in the hands of the president -- especially after the 1962 constitution change under which the president was directly elected by the people. In the original constitution, he was chosen by an electoral college.

Prime ministers in France thus tend to be loyal agents of the president's rule.

The only time prime ministers establish their independence is when there is a majority in the National Assembly that opposes the president. In these periods of "cohabitation" -- there have been three of them -- the president is forced to take a step back from domestic affairs.

In order to reduce the likelihood of "cohabitations", in 2000 the constitution was changed to reduce the president's mandate from seven to five years. Five years is also the mandate of the legislature, and the principle is that the two terms should run concurrently.
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This is why the presidential elections on Sunday will be followed in June by elections for a new National Assembly. The expectation is that the new president will get a supporting majority in the legislature, though there is no guarantee.

The president elected on May 6 -- Nicolas Sarkozy or Segolene Royal -- will be the 23rd in French history and the sixth in the Fifth Republic.

The country's first president was Napoleon's nephew Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who was elected in 1848 and declared himself emperor four years later. At 40 when he took office, he was also the youngest president in French history.

Under the Third and Fourth Republics (1871-1940 and 1946-1958), presidents were chosen by parliament and their powers were limited.

The presidents of the Fifth Republic were Charles de Gaulle (1958-1969); Georges Pompidou (1969-1974); Valery Giscard d'Estaing (1974-1981); Francois Mitterrand (1981-1995); and Jacques Chirac (1995-2007).

De Gaulle resigned during his second term and Pompidou died in office. Mitterrand's 14 years was the longest ever served by a French president.

France's political institutions have come under growing critical scrutiny in recent years, and there have been calls to make the president more accountable.

Neither Sarkozy nor Royal favours wholesale reform. However they both want to restrict presidents to two terms in office, and limit their powers to make nominations to state offices. Sarkozy wants the president to have the right to explain himself before the National Assembly.

Today at midday, 34,11% of the electorate had already cast their vote -- much higher that the average total vote of previous years. The French realise the importance of this election.
That already is a good sign.
Let us hope they choose well.





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